[kt9]

> He started chip companies on the side, which Georgia Tech encouraged, eager to see successful university spinoffs that had showered riches and prestige on Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top computer engineering schools.

And now there will be no more academics at Georgia Tech working to spinoff companies that shower riches on their benefactor universities. The bureaucracy strikes again and kills innovation.

[Spooky23]

That's probably necessary in public universities.

In my region, there are two institutions with leadership that let power and influence in these areas get to their heads. First, there's private RPI, where the president is basically looting the school for a decade, but the board does nothing. Then look at the sad tale of SUNY Poly, where its president did some pretty amazing things along with some... other things that would have been survivable in a private environment but a death sentence in the public sector.

Unless you're a political person with the ability to stay at "arms length" with campaign funds and PACs, you cannot work for government entities and be safely involved with any significant business activity that is potentially related to your public employment. Even if you're able to do so, any misstep, greedy mistake, illegal act, or other screw up will be exponentially more dangerous.

Linkage:

RPI: https://news.vice.com/article/americas-highest-paid-college-...

SUNY Poly: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/physicist-in-...

[eastWestMath]

Also, professors do steal money. There's all sorts of guidelines at my university now about how grant money can be used because a prof in the medical school used a grant for cancer research to renovate his kitchen (more or less).

[azernik]

UC Berkeley seems to handle this process just fine.

[castellar]

Could you or someone possibly elaborate on this? Why does UC Berkeley have so much better luck with startups and spin-off companies/technologies when compared to other public institutions?

[azernik]

It has an institutional culture (in the bureaucracy) of nurturing those startups. In particular, it has a very clear and permissive procedure for transferring work to private companies (see [1], under Outgoing MTA). You tell the university what materials (including IP) you want to use in your company, and the university negotiates a direct quid pro quo.

The Georgia Tech process, by contrast, seems totally ad hoc and amateur. "You can take stuff for free up to a point, as long as you agree to certain investment agreements with the university, and if you step over one of our unclear lines we will slap you down."

[1] http://ipira.berkeley.edu/material-transfer-agreements